


The Legacy

by vividder



Series: Beneath Suspicion [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Stream of Consciousness, Suicide, Time elapses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 20:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10647480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vividder/pseuds/vividder
Summary: Sherlock commits suicide as a result of the Death Curse.  Mycroft POV.





	The Legacy

_Twenty years later_

Mycroft knew what the file folder contained before he opened it.  The man who had delivered it had been walking more stiffly than normal and had been trying to hide an expression of acute concern.  A certain tension in the corners of his mouth revealed that he was displeased at someone or something.  Given the developments Mycroft had been monitoring, he wasn’t surprised.

He also hoped that his deductions had been wrong.

Mycroft scanned his eyes over the report, and, after he finished, he felt as if something had vanished from inside of him.  It was exactly as if something he’d never even realized he’d had had gone missing.  This feeling of loss wasn’t a sensation Mycroft felt often, but he was very aware of it now. 

Sherlock was gone.  That had been the gist of the report. Not off in some drug den or kidnapped or trapped in his Mind Palace.  Sherlock was…dead.

Suicide, the report had said.

Really, it had been the only logical conclusion to Sherlock’s circumstances.  Those words, Eurus’s last words, had indeed been a death curse.  Sherlock had never forgotten his need to discover her.  He had been nearly driven insane with that desire.  At first, it had seemed possible, with enough cases (some contrived by Mycroft for the occasion), to keep the itch at bay; but just like an untreated wound, the curiosity just festered.  It wasn’t long until Sherlock turned to drugs again.  After that came the attempts to institutionalize him, but as always, John Watson stepped in, unable to fully understand how the strange day with Mr. Dresden had been the beginning of Sherlock’s downfall.

Mycroft had eventually acquiesced to let Sherlock live with John again.  He knew that he was running out of options, short of putting his brother in a coma, to keep him sane.  Mycroft had hoped something familiar, something completely nonthreatening, might be able to help.  Sherlock had always listened to John even when he ignored everyone else.  But even John had failed.  Sherlock had injected himself with a lethal dose of cocaine while John went to run a quick errand. 

John had always trusted Sherlock more than anyone else.  Often times, his faith had paid off.  But too many times, it had caused more problems than it solved.  This time, it had cost Sherlock his life.  But Sherlock’s suicide was not John’s fault, it was Eurus’s.  After all, she’d wanted nothing more than for her brother to die a discredited fool, and she’d gotten her wish.  Sherlock had continued to believe she was alive even after seeing her corpse repeatedly.  The media blamed the drugs, his ‘disordered’ mind, the stress from cases, and repressed gay urges, among other things, for Sherlock’s madness.  Not a single one guessed magic. 

Sherlock’s funeral was held on an unseasonably warm day that November.  The sun shone high in the sky.  Only Sherlock’s family, closest friends, and few treasured acquaintances had been invited.  Mycroft spoke about his relationship with Sherlock, but his words were hardly the ones Sherlock would have used.  John did the same, but his was more honest and emotional.  Mycroft was surprised to note that John had not been crying during the service.  Somehow, Sherlock’s closest friend had realized something, perhaps not consciously, about Sherlock’s decline.  The suicide hadn’t been as much of a surprise to John as Mycroft had assumed it would be.

John Watson was a man full of surprises.

As Mycroft sat by Sherlock’s graveyard, he could not help but wonder.  He had not contacted Mab in at least five years, their debts finally settled.  Dresden had remained her Knight throughout that time.  He wondered if Dresden knew.  He wondered if Dresden cared.

He wondered if Dresden had been right. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! For now, this is the end of the Beneath Suspicion series. I have some ideas for how this will continue, so this probably isn't the permanent end.
> 
> Kudos, comments, and prompts/requests are always welcome.


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